The Butterfly Road
by Atalanta Pendragonne
Summary: The rise and fall of MWPP, from Peter's POV
1. The Deal as Always was Faustian

The deal as always was Faustian  
  
but you signed where they told you to sign  
  
and your hopes and your dreams   
  
all your wildest schemes  
  
were there in your head like the taste of good wine  
  
then you signed  
  
and the deal was done  
  
and god knows it had to be fun  
  
Folk Underground, "The Butterfly Road"  
  
All I ever wanted was for someone to need me. Sounds simple enough. Altruistic, even. But when you aren't strong, or handsome, or clever, you sort of disappear.   
  
If you're lucky, that is.   
  
I got very good at disappearing. After all, you can't hex someone you can't see, and there was always some opportunistic bully ready to hurl a nasty little jinx at me for the heinous crime of being in his line of sight. I wasn't good at countercharms, or fast enough to dodge. What I was good at was hiding, and seeking out hidden passageways and secret rooms, and seeking out the right dusty books to help figure out the passwords. Eventually someone noticed that I was always the last to leave a class and first to arrive at the next, and to wonder about it.   
  
James.   
  
He was one of the people I'd started hiding from. Not an easy task, since we shared a dorm room and had nearly all our classes together. He was on the Quidditch team, which meant he could get away with almost anything. I should have been suspicious when he stopped lazily insulting me over the dinner table and at lights-out. If I was clever I would have, but I'm not clever enough to be suspicious of good fortune. And James had a new scapegoat by now, which lead me, foolishly, to relax a bit.   
  
Until the night I woke up with James' hand over my mouth, and his crony Sirius sitting on my legs.   
  
"Hello, worm," James said in my ear. I couldn't see his face, but I could hear his casual grin. "I've been watching you. Or, really, watching for you."   
  
"Yeah!" chirped Sirius, a little too loudly. "Since you can't watch what you can't see."   
  
"Sssh!" hissed James. The pressure on my mouth eased up slightly. "Now, you're gonna tell us how you're sneaking around, and you're gonna show us how to do it." Well. The Golden Boy of Gryffindor and his pretty shadow needed something from me. I'd never realized you could feel triumphant while being pinned down by a pair of bullies. That started to fade when I felt something hard and not-quite-sharp poking my belly.   
  
"And if you don't tell us," giggled Sirius, "I'll-"   
  
"What's going on?" The sleepy voice was another of our year-mates, Remus Lupin. He'd made up for the offense of being the smartest one in our year by letting the others copy off him during exams. James and Sirius pulled back a bit as Remus cast a light spell. Now, I knew Remus wanted their approval too much to tell tales, and I also knew that if I didn't give James and Sirius what they wanted, they'd keep at me until I did.   
  
That was when I had one of my few clever ideas. "It's really, really secret, right?" I lowered my voice to a conspiratorial whisper. If I tell you, you gotta swear not to tell anyone else." I feigned a look of inspiration. "Remus! You know some of those jinxes that only hit if you break an oath, right?"   
  
The smile Remus gave me wasn't one most people would recognize. It was the hidden smile of one outcast to another. James blinked, realizing he'd lost the upper hand for the moment. Sirius pouted as Remus cast the geas, but as I began listing hidden passages his smile returned.   
  
"...and there are more," I finished. "I know I can find more." Out of James' and Sirius' line of sight, Remus raised an eyebrow. He'd caught my wording, knew that it was two statements, not one. I also knew he'd keep his mouth shut about it. And that was how we came to be something of a team; James the Quidditch Hero, Sirius the Handsome One, Remus the Brain, and me, the Sneak. 


	2. Pulling the Gentle Out

_I saw a crow upon the killingfield where I  
Used to be soft but I shall become steel and I  
Don't much enjoy pulling the gentle out but I  
Mean to survive and that's what this stuff is all about_

Talis Kimberely, "Carrion"

After that, things were a little easier for me. Remus and I were tacitly under James and Sirius' protection, now, and as such not fair game to all and sundry. Even if they weren't precisely kind to us. I relaxed a bit, but Remus seemed more wary than ever.

Well, I knew all along that he was the smart one.

It was a cloudy winter afternoon when James cornered me alone. It was odd to see him without Sirius but I didn't dare comment.

"I have a job for you, worm," he breathed in my ear. He still called me that. Not precisely kind.

"What do you want?"

"Your clever little friend, Remus." Well, 'friend' was maybe putting it a bit strongly. Fellow outcast was more like it. But I wasn't about to correct him. "Every month, he disappears. You're going to find out why, sneak."

"But I don't think I can-"

"I didn't ask if you could. I said you would." He smiled unpleasantly. "I know you don't want to disappoint me." He squeezed my shoulder, a gesture that looked comradely but hurt like hell. "So find out."

It would be boring to go over the chart-keeping, the noting on the calendar the nights Remus wasn't in the dorm, the cross-referencing to see what they had in common. Once I'd done that, though, it was all too easy to figure out.

I sought out Remus and pulled him into one of the secret corridors I hadn't told James and Sirius about yet.

"I. Um. Figured it out." I couldn't meet his eyes. "Why you go away every month." I bit my lip. He was so pale. I looked away again. "On the full moon-"

"Please... please don't..."

"James told me to find out!" I punched the wall and immediately regretted it. "If I don't tell him, he's going to pound me."

Now it was Remus' turn to look away. "I don't want anyone to know," he whispered.

I sighed. "You could do that binding spell again," I suggested. "Like for the secret doors. They'll know, but they won't be able to tell anyone. Besides," I rolled my eyes, "They'll think it's cool."

He made a face. "You're right, they will." He shuddered. "I wish they... no. I don't. But I almost do."

And that was how the four of us shared a second secret.


	3. Stormy Weather's on the Way

_Looking through the window_
    _To see which way the wind blows_
    _It seems as though a hurricane is due today_
    _Sunny on the outside_
    _Stormy on the inside_

_Stormy weather's always best for making hay_

Fairport Convention, "It's Alright Ma, It's Only Witchcraft"

Of course, I don't think James or Sirius would have told anyone at that point even without a geas. Secrets are addictive. And oh, did they ever think it was cool to know a real live werewolf! Remus became cool by default, braininess nonwithstanding. He basked in it most of the time.

Other times, he talked to me.

"Sirius asked me to bite him," he confided once while James and Sirius were at Quidditch practice. "Twice."

"It figures," I snorted. "What did you tell him?"

He rolled his eyes. "Told him to study his astronomy. Sirius is the _dog_ star, not the wolf star."

I chuckled. "He's not going to give up, you know."

"Don't remind me. I'm running out of excuses."

"Yeah, like being locked in St. Mungo's Criminally Dangerous ward isn't a good enough reason?"

"Only if it was Sirius being locked up." He sighed. "He's persistent."

"There's got to be some other way to get him off your back," I said.

Remus shook his head. "He's got his heart set on being a shapeshifter." He looked thoughtful. "Maybe..." He scrambled to his feet.

"Maybe what?"

"I'm going to the library," He sounded very serious, which usually meant he had an idea. "I'll try and talk to you after dinner."

As it turned out, it was all of us he talked to after dinner. We crouched in an oddly-shaped room I'd found behind a broom closet. Remus' eyes were glittering as he explained. "All you have to do is master the Animagus transformation and then you can change whenever you want, not just at the full moon."

"But I wouldn't be able to choose what shape I'd be," Sirius whined.

"Sssh!" hissed James. "Let him finish."

His optimism faltering, Remus went on. "Well, that's sort of the point of the spell. It turns you into the animal you have the most affinity with. So I'm sure you'd turn into something really neat, right?" He was starting to sound a little desperate. But I could tell that James, at least, was beginning to like the idea.

"You're right, that would be a lot more useful than being a werewolf. An Animagus can still think for themselves and everything, even in beast-form, right?"

Remus nodded.

Sirius looked like he still hadn't given up on the werewolf idea. "But it'll be hard," he complained. "It'd be like extra Transfiguration homework!"

"But it'll be worth it, right?" I ventured softly.

Remus shot me a quick, grateful glance as he pulled a thick book from under his robes. "It'll absolutely be worth it." He flipped to a chapter on shape-shifting spells. "This says it's like meditating, it gets easier with practice _and_," he grinned, "There's a sort of chant to help. I can read out the chant for you three and you can follow along until you have it memorized. After that it's just a matter of practicing."

James looked excited. Sirius still seemed dubious, but he'd been overruled.

Me, I thought it was neat.

And that was our third big secret.


	4. Transformed

_And somewhere around this point in the song someone normally gets transformed into a loathly worm._

The Flash Girls, "All Purpose Folk Song (Child Ballad #1)"

For someone who put up so much fuss over it, Sirius sure took to the meditation that was the beginning of mastering the Animagus transformation. He certainly memorized the slippery un-English (Remus said it sounded like Finnish crossed with Hebrew) of the chant before any of us. Before Remus, even.

And he started practicing on his own, which we'd expressly agreed not to do. I caught him at it once, in one of the hidden passageways, chanting out loud. He was so deep in trance that his eyes were glassy and unseeing. I walked past him without being noticed. It was beginning to work. I could see it. His face looked soft, like hot wax just before it melts. The sight made me just a little queasy; did I look like that, when the three of us sat in a half-circle, chanting along as Remus read to us from the book he'd swiped from the library? Somehow I never got around to asking Remus that, but I'm pretty sure the question lingering in my mind is part of why it took me longer to get the hang of the change than James and Sirius. I couldn't seem to keep up the chant without wondering if I looked melted.

It wasn't long after that Sirius got the transformation completely down for the first time. One moment the three of us were chanting in various degrees of trance, the next Sirius was yelping like a startled dog, which of course, he was. For a moment James looked angry – angry, I suppose, that Sirius had done it before him – and Remus was gawking as if he'd never seen anyone shift before. I wondered idly if his shapechanging looked anything like the Animagus transformation.

After that we practiced more than ever. I was so shocked at having seen it actually _work_ that I had trouble getting back into trance, so for a while I just watched as Sirius got better at it, the slow change becoming swifter each time, until he could shift in a heartbeat. And James, too, had that softened-wax look that so upset my stomach. But it was even worse when James and Sirius could both change, and I couldn't. I was frustrated at being behind. Sirius and James thought it was funny. I took to spending my Saturdays in the library, reading everything I could find on Practical Transfiguration.

It was on one of these Saturdays that my studies were interrupted by a soft but distinct cough. I looked up to see a solid-looking blond with a Hufflepuff badge. His wide eyes gave him an almost cherubic appearance. Or that might have been because he couldn't be past his third year.

"I know who you are," he said quietly. "I know who your friends are."

I wasn't particularly impressed, and it must have showed.

"You can stop looking at me that way." He raised his chin slightly.

"I'm sorry," I replied, not very sincerely. "But I'm not sure how to react to some random child telling me he knows me."

His shoulders stiffened and he extended a hand formally. "Bartemius Crouch, Junior. My friends call me Barty." He suddenly looked very stern. "Your friends call me something else."

Oh. It was _that_ Hufflepuff. He'd supposedly had very public hysterics last year when a fellow on the Slytherin Quidditch team had told him to get lost. And James had told us, sniggering, about having caught him and another boy snogging in a broom closet. "Um. You're, um..."

He looked me hard in the eye, daring me to go on. "Yeah. I'm um."

I sighed in frustration. "Look, what do you _want_?

"I just wanted to tell you. I never thought you were a bully. I hear how they talk to you." He glanced at another table, where a pale, thin boy his own age stared at him intently. "I just wanted to remind you that not everyone is like that." He turned on his heel and strode off, leaving me to puzzle over what he'd said.

Remus was still helping me practice the Animagus transformation long after James and Sirius were able to shift at will. He assured me that I was progressing, that he'd seen the air around me waver like heat-shimmer. And it was Remus who witnessed my first change.

"Oh, _hell_!" I snapped, changing back. "I'd be better off telling them I can't do it and I give up."

"It's not so bad." Remus tried to reassure me. "Rats are smart. Look how many wizards have rats as familiars."

I rolled my eyes. "Right, then, tell me that Sirirus would have been after you to bite him if you'd been a were-_rat_."

He sighed. "It's going to be awfully useful, though. I mean, you'll still be able to pick up things... you'll practically have hands!"

That did cheer me up a bit. And I kept on practicing with the chant, even after I could shift in a heartbeat. I'd read that I could gain better control that way, and it was true. Eventually I could halt the change partway through, or just change a certain body part. I kept that to myself though.

As I'd predicted, James and Sirius thought my Animagus form was hysterical.

"The worm's got a worm-tail!" James snickered.

I shifted back. "Well at least I don't look like a bloody great coat rack with a spiky set of prongs sticking out of my head!" I snapped.

It's funny what sticks.

I'm not sure how 'Moony' and 'Padfoot' got started, though. Remus and Sirius just started calling each other that.

You could say it was a secret I was never in on.


End file.
